


Nothing Like The Sun

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Biblical References, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 05:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14129061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: One tended to go through a number bodies in six thousand years, even if one was as cautious or sturdy as Aziraphale. Crowley, who was neither cautious nor sturdy, had gone through a large number. He’d changed appearance so many times that in Aziraphale’s memory he was often just his eyes, for no matter if Crowley was tall or short, lithe or stocky, blond or raven-haired, his eyes stayed the same.





	Nothing Like The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> I've been poking at this for like a month so I thought I might as well finish it up and post it even if I'm not 100% sure about it.

Aziraphale sat down heavily in the back room of the bookshop, relieved beyond words that it was still there and that _he_ was still there to enjoy it. Aziraphale was immensely grateful that the apocalypse had been averted, of course, but the matter of being restored to his old body took slight emotional precedence (little though Aziraphale liked to admit it). Getting a new body if one happened to be discorporated was a bureaucratic nightmare, and after the events of the last three days, Aziraphale didn’t like his chances at convincing Heaven to accommodate his little mistake. Somehow he didn’t think sharing with Madame Tracy would have worked out long term, either. He’d have been stuck drifting through the world and interacting with things in only the weakest, most ephemeral sense. Aziraphale shivered at the thought and wrapped his arms around himself. Perhaps some tea would do him some good.

As he bustled around his tiny kitchen, Aziraphale reflected on the times he and his counterpart been discorporated. One tended to go through a number bodies in six thousand years, even if one was as cautious and sturdy as Aziraphale. Crowley, who was neither cautious nor sturdy, had gone through a _large_ number. He’d changed appearance so many times that in Aziraphale’s memory he was often just his eyes, for no matter if Crowley was tall or short, lithe or stocky, raven-haired or blond, his eyes stayed the same.

They’d been The Snake and The Angel at the beginning, of course. Crowley small and wriggly, Aziraphale dimpled and muscular. After the garden they’d gone their separate ways, and when next they bumped into each other Crowley was sporting a new name and a person-shaped body. Six thousand years hadn’t dimmed the day in Aziraphale’s memory, and wasn’t that funny. He supposed it was just one of those things, what was it the humans talked about? Trauma? Could angelic beings experience trauma? Aziraphale didn’t know, but he did know that the events leading up to the Deluge were etched into his memory like cuneiform into clay, and that Crowley was an indelible part of it.

Humanity had been less spread out in those days, but still spread out enough that Aziraphale couldn’t possibly be apprised of every little thing that was happening. He was in more regular contact with Heaven, receiving orders and making routine reports, helping out or just watching over the world. To this effect, or so he told himself, he was sitting in a tavern in a lovely little town on the bank of the Euphrates when someone walking past the bar did a double-take.

“Aziraphale?” A voice hissed in disbelief. Aziraphale started, sloshing a mouthful of his drink down himself, and stared at the man speaking to him.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” He asked, politely enough he’d thought, considering he wasn’t due to meet anybody from Upstairs for another month.

The man smirked. “Crowley. Although I suppose you might remember me better like this.” In an instant, the man had turned into a snake, which slithered up onto the table and helped itself to Aziraphale’s lunch.

Aziraphale swatted it away and stood up abruptly. “So. You’re still around, I see.” He sniffed. Crowley turned back into a man and gave him a very nasty look.

“You haven’t changed.” His tone was not complimentary.

“You haven’t either. Looking like a person doesn’t make you less of a snake.” Aziraphale said coolly, inclining his head as he took in Crowley’s bright yellow eyes with their slitted pupils.

Crowley laughed. “Ah, well. It’s easier to keep an eye on things this way. Speaking of, do you have plans for later?”

Aziraphale crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you trying to _tempt_ me?”

Crowley rolled those unnerving eyes. “No, angel, _later_ ,” he drew the word out dramatically, “when the water rises. Do you have a plan or have your higher ups condemned you to go down with the humans?”

Aziraphale felt a ripple of confusion and, he was ashamed to say, fear. “What are you talking about?”

Crowley made a surprised sound. “They haven’t told you, that’s interesting.”

“Told me what?” Aziraphale was beginning to get irritated at this point, and was reaching for the knife at his waist when Crowley snapped his fingers and vanished it.

“I would have thought someone had told you.” He said unconcernedly. “I’ve known for months and months. Your side’s sending a flood to wipe out the humans. Well, the humans and the Nephilim.”

Aziraphale felt cold all of a sudden, because he’d been hearing whispers, and what Crowley said would explain them, unfortunately.

The presence of both Heavenly and Infernal agents on Earth since the beginning had brought about some unforeseen side effects. Angel stock, it transpired, were capable of breeding with humans, and while such a thing had never appealed to Aziraphale personally he knew it had been going on, and he knew the product of these unions were a source of concern for those in Heaven. But he hadn’t known that they’d reached a decision about what to do about the problem. Speaking of, how did Crowley know?

“Where are you getting your information?” Aziraphale demanded. Crowley shrugged.

“I think I’ll keep that to myself. But I will tell you that your people and my people have come to the conclusion we’ve all been a little too… hands on about this whole experiment. Both Heaven and Hell think there should be fewer pieces on the board, and they’re starting over. Earth as we know it is done.”

Aziraphale gaped. “But… the Ineffable Plan…”

Crowley looked momentarily irritated, but smoothed his expression over quickly. “I don’t know how this figures into _that_ , but I do know every single person has about six hours before the storm comes and I know there’s a man named Noah, further up in the mountains. D’you know him, maybe? Old fella, carpenter. Been building a huge boat for the last ten years.”

Aziraphale shook his head.

“Well. I suggest you get a move on unless you want to be underwater this evening.” And with an unnerving smirk, Crowley left the tavern.

Aziraphale didn’t see Crowley again, not as the rains fell, not as the carpenter and his family loaded up the ark, not as they floated across the water as the Tigris and Euphrates flooded their banks and destroyed the small beginnings of civilization in the valley. He looked among the snakes onboard but never found him.

There were two things from that day that Aziraphale would never forget. One of them was meeting Crowley in the tavern. The other was standing on the deck of the ark as lightning crashed overhead and watching the sun slip below the horizon, staining the flooding land below red as blood. It would be a very, very long night.

Crowley wasn’t around after that for a long time, and Aziraphale had settled in his mind that his body must have been destroyed and his soul dragged back to Hell during the flood. As it turned out, this was incorrect.

Aziraphale didn’t know if the children of Israel _in fact_ had direct communication with God, but he did know that they _believed_ it, and he knew Up Above thought it was important to the Ineffable Plan to keep an eye on them, so for several generations that was what he did. He followed them into exile and watched with a fervent interest as their religion changed and grew with them. He did his best to help them when he could, made their burdens lighter, their rations last longer.

He watched a young woman leave her baby in a basket on the Nile.

He watched another young woman pull him out and cradle him in her arms and, well, if Aziraphale had nudged the basket into her line of sight as it drifted north to the sea, that was nobody’s business but his own.

As Aziraphale was leaving the palace he bumped into a tall thin man who was obviously doing his best to be inconspicuous but failing miserably. He would have straightened them both out, apologized, and been on his way, but the man’s eyes caught his attention, and Aziraphale dragged him into a dark corner with a quick glance around to make sure nobody was watching them.

“You!” he ground out, grasping Crowley by the shoulders and pushing him roughly against the wall. “I should have known _you_ were involved in this somehow.”

Crowley tried to squirm out of Aziraphale’s grasp, his eyes narrowing. “Now hold on. What are you accusing me of doing, exactly?”

“You know perfectly well what I’m- the babies!” Aziraphale cried out, giving Crowley a shake. “The babies of the Israelites being executed by the pharaoh’s goons. Couldn’t you have just stayed gone?”

Crowley stared down at him with a look of disbelief growing on his face. “You think _I’m_ responsible for this?”

“Why else would you be here?”

“In the palace?”

“In Egypt! On Earth!” Aziraphale took a breath that came out rather more like an impatient huff than he’d meant it. “I thought you died during the flood.”

Crowley shook his head, making an exasperated noise. “We can’t die, _angel_.”

“You’re avoiding the question. _Why are you here_?”

“Same reason you are, I suspect. To keep an eye on things.” He glared down at where Aziraphale’s hands were leaving bruises on his arms. “Now, would you let go of me so we can discuss this like civilized-“

“I don’t think so. Even if you aren’t the cause of this new law, you’re responsible for all the rest. The slavery and the pyramids and-“

“No I’m not!” Crowley hissed.

“Torturing the children of Israel is exactly the kind of thing Your Side sent you up here to do, and your very presence after what happened last millenium-“

“Listen.” Crowley cut him off. “The ‘children of Israel’, as you call them, are being oppressed by a group of people who resent their belief in their god, it’s as simple as that. The pharaohs sense a threat to their divine right to rule and they’re taking it out on your little fans.” He wriggled again but Aziraphale held him fast. “And about the flood- you didn’t really expect me to be gone for good, did you?” He flashed a grin.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Aziraphale ignored the grin and his light tone. A righteous anger was building in his chest, the anger of a being who has had to watch human suffering and had nobody to blame for it finally finding a target for their rage.

Crowley’s expression grew serious again. “Have you never been discorporated? Not once since we’ve been here?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Crowley looked like he was trying to decide how to phrase his next words. “If we’re killed,” he began after several seconds of watching Aziraphale, “we come back. I’m not sure what Your Side’s turnaround time is like, but it takes a while for Hell to get a new body set up. I’ve been here a generation. Your people have been here longer. I don’t have anything to do with this, you have to believe me.”

Aziraphale looked into Crowley’s eyes, a head or so above him and widened in faux-innocence. The old tempter didn’t blink.

“No,” Aziraphale decided, holding Crowley’s lithe body in place with the weight of his own while he drew out his knife from his hip. “I don’t.” And he stabbed Crowley, hard, in the chest.

Crowley sputtered as he slid down the wall, his hands scrabbling over the wound which was pouring blood over his fingers. He gaped up at Aziraphale, who wiped his knife on his tunic and slid it back into the sheath on his belt. A wet gasping sound came from Crowley’s mouth, and he closed his eyes with a wince.

“I suppose if you come back I’ll know you were telling the truth.” Aziraphale snarled. And before the serpent could convince him to change his mind, he fled.

He saw Crowley again twenty or so years later, during the ninth of the great plagues. It had been dark for three days and three nights and there was no sign that might change any time soon. Before that there had been boils, frogs, snakes and flies, a river red with blood. Aziraphale was at his wit’s end when he once again saw Crowley on his way out of the palace, in the same body, no less.

Aziraphale didn’t hesitate to pull out his weapon and round on the demon, but Crowley was ready for him with his own sword. They clashed, Aziraphale using his greater strength and breadth to back Crowley against a wall, but Crowley was more agile than he had been the last time.

“Angel!” Crowley roared as he leapt out of the way, forcing Aziraphale to catch himself lest he overbalance and fall.

“I thought you said you’d be back in a different body.”

“If you’d succeeded in killing me!” Crowley spat with indignation as Aziraphale rounded on him again. “It took a while to heal but I managed.”

“I won’t be making the same mistake again.” Aziraphale responded. They circled each other, their blows failing to land, and Crowley laughed with an oddly breathless mirth. Aziraphale couldn't help but stare at his eyes, gleaming like burnished bronze in the dark.

“Come on, you can’t still think I have anything to do with any of this. I can’t make swarms of insects appear, that’s more Beelzebub’s thing-“

“Be quiet!” Aziraphale screamed. He felt quite unhinged for a moment, and Crowley must have picked up on some of it because he went very pale and his mouth set in a tight line as he dodged another blow. “I suppose you’re about to tell me that the Israelites brought this on themselves, are you? That Your Side has nothing to do with this?”

“I was under the impression that Your Side was doing this to punish the Egyptians?”

“That’s what the Israelites think, yes, but we don’t have anybody who-“ Aziraphale shook his head and made to grab Crowley’s arm, but Crowley slithered out of his grasp. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t be around to see the sun rise again. I’ll have enough to do in the upcoming months without your interference so you’ll just have to get a new body and wait a century to cause more trouble.” He narrowly missed Crowley’s neck with his knife and Crowley made an odd squawking sound of surprise.

“Come now, angel, is this really necessary?”

“Yes it is.” Azpraphale gasped, slightly winded. “I won’t have any more of your lies or your interference, and I don’t intend to stop this until one of us is, ah, what was the word you used?”

“Discorporated?”

“Yes, that.”

“Have it your way.” Crowley hissed. And they dueled on, the darkness all around them.

In the end, it was Crowley who managed to land the first mortal blow. He struck Aziraphale’s neck, his windpipe, and he couldn’t even let out a cry as he fell to the ground at the palace entrance, his own sword sliding from his fingers as he tried to stem the flow of blood. He wanted to shout after Crowley, to curse him, anything, but he could only lay there in the unnatural night as the demon ran down the steep stairs and away into the city.

Aziraphale tried to summon up the strength to heal himself but it was impossible, the damage was too extensive. Instead he lay there and watched the pool of his own blood spread and spill down the palace steps, black in the night. As he slipped out of consciousness he thought maybe he could see a faint light along the horizon.

 

By the time Aziraphale got back to Earth he felt entirely out of the loop. It hadn’t taken him as long as Crowley’s estimations but it had taken him _too long_ , mostly because Upstairs wanted him to give a full and complete report on everything he’d witnessed while on Earth and devise a new plan of action based on his intel before outfitting him with a new body. The world looked and felt different somehow when he returned, and Aziraphale had no idea if it was because of the passage of time or if it was _him_ and his new physical form.

It was actually a relief when he met Crowley in a seaside town upon getting off a ship from Egypt. The world had grown since Aziraphale had last been a part of it, and Greece was almost civilized, if the rumors were to be believed. But that didn’t mean he felt entirely comfortable wandering around a strange land alone, so when he disembarked and saw a short figure with weathered, dark skin and eyes like golden coins examining fish at the market, he felt oddly cheered.

“I suppose it shouldn’t be good to see you.” Aziraphale said with a tight smile, tapping Crowley on the shoulder. Crowley started and dropped the fish unceremoniously back into the basket in front of him.

He looked at Aziraphale with narrowed eyes before recognition filled his features. His mouth dropped open very slightly as he looked up and down at Aziraphale’s new body.

“That’s an odd look for you.” He said after a moment. Aziraphale privately agreed. It was very unusual to get used to seeing yourself encased every day in a body that was muscular and broad-shouldered and then one day to be a skinny little twig of a man. He found he didn’t like it much. 

Crowley grinned at Aziraphale’s self-consciousness. “So, I see you’re finally back. I’m not surprised it took Your Lot this long to get you a new body.”

“After you destroyed my last one, you mean.”

He shuffled his feet. “Somehow I thought you wouldn’t still be angry about that.”

Aziraphale found that, in fact, he wasn’t very angry. He was just impatient to learn what he had missed since he’d been gone.

This would become the norm for the pair over the next millennium or two. The Arrangement may not have been formed until a thousand years after the death of Christ but the groundwork for it had been laid the day Aziraphale tried and failed to kill Crowley in Egypt. Both of them detested not knowing what was going on, and both of them found having to trust each other for information a great deal less tedious than piecing it together every time one of them was discorporated, which continued to happen once or twice a century, with Crowley overwhelmingly in the lead in terms of body count. They killed each other on several occasions, but the vast majority of discorporations were in fact from accidents or outside agents. In no particular order, there was the time Aziraphale was discorporated during the Trojan War, the time Aziraphale killed Crowley during the fire of Rome, the time Aziraphale was discorporated because he refused to leave that young woman during the destruction of the library at Alexandria, the time Crowley drowned with that ship bound for Antikythera, the time Crowley killed Aziraphale to buy himself time to flee during the census, the time they were both trapped during the Christian persecutions after the death of Christ… the list was overwhelmingly skewed towards deaths at the hands of humans or disasters.

It was rather reassuring to have somebody to tell you what you had missed, and as time went on their animosity grew less and less, until one day Aziraphale found himself moving to protect Crowley during a Viking raid on the shore of the damp island they were currently inhabiting rather than leaving him to whatever might happen, and Aziraphale realized he was somewhat fond of the demon.

The Arrangement had been proposed a century or so later. It formalized their reasons for checking in with each other and allowed them to catch up with anything they may have missed a good deal more quickly, which turned out to be a very smart move, because the period that would later be called the Dark Ages saw an increase in discorporations that wouldn’t go down again for years. Aziraphale had to admit, after going through three bodies in a century, that Crowley may have had a point about the humans doing a lot of it themselves, because he couldn’t think of a reason his side would let him go through three bodies that fast. They certainly gave him an earful every time he arrived in Heaven waiting for a new one.

The fourteenth century had been rough for both of them, but Aziraphale suspected, privately, that it could have been a good deal less rough for Crowley if Aziraphale hadn’t been discorporated thirty years in and then spent the next hundred years being yelled at by his superiors for the number of bodies he’d required recently. He returned to Earth to find Crowley subdued, and the demon was reluctant to go into detail about what Aziraphale had missed. It made Aziraphale feel strangely guilty thinking of it now, after everything. He supposed Crowley had missed him, if his reaction to finding Aziraphale inside Madame Tracy was any indication.

Aziraphale took a drink of his tea, reminiscing. The fourteenth century had been hard, and the fifteenth, but he’d started his bible collection towards the end of it and the sixteenth century had been nice. Everything since then had been nice, actually, with the exception of a dozen or so years here or there. He and Crowley had stopped getting discorporated all the time in the sixteenth century, and had been through three bodies altogether since then, not including Aziraphale’s little journey across the globe the day of the apocalypse.

Aziraphale took another drink of tea. Yes, he’d gotten rather fond of this body, and would have been disappointed to have to give it up. He’d have been unhappy for Crowley to have lost his current body as well. He’d had it since… Aziraphale wasn’t even sure. He’d seen Crowley discorporated in Venice in 1679, and met him in Rome in 1701, and he’d had the same body since. The day they’d met back up had been another day etched into his memory, although nothing catastrophic had happened.

It had been an unlikely coincidence, considering that by that time in their acquaintance they had prearranged locations to meet in the event of discorporation and had both been living in England for a number of years, but it had happened nonetheless. Aziraphale had been hurrying through St Peter’s Square and he’d seen a man sitting at the base of the obelisk, running a hand through the thick mass of hair on his head and squinting in the bright morning sun. Aziraphale wouldn’t have stopped or taken any special notice if it hadn’t been for the eyes- golden, snakelike, and so familiar that it sent a sudden ache through Aziraphale’s chest to remember the moment in the present. He’d stopped walking and turned, his mouth falling open, and Crowley had seen him and leapt up with a grin on his face that Aziraphale had returned.

They’d gotten spectacularly drunk that evening and made arrangements to return to England together at the end of the week. Aziraphale had commented on Crowley’s new body, and Crowley, Aziraphale could remember clearly, had seemed uneasy discussing the subject. For a long time Aziraphale had wondered if Down Below had given him some special trouble about it to make him react like that, but now, in the present day, Aziraphale found he was having a very different kind of thought about Crowley’s current body.

Everything seemed new and strange through the lens of the averted apocalypse. Possibilities for the future flitted through Aziraphale’s mind, most of them centered on the demon and his body. It was a little discomfiting, but not nearly as discomfiting as suddenly wondering if he’d been attracted to Crowley all those years ago and if that was why he’d reacted in that way.

But that was ridiculous, Aziraphale thought as he finished his tea and got up for something stronger. Demons were supposed to tempt people, if Crowley had ever sensed something like attraction from Aziraphale he’d have leapt on the opportunity to corrupt him faster than you could say “lust”. He’d have been thrilled to knock Aziraphale down a few pegs, maybe even to make him fall.

Which meant he couldn’t be attracted to Crowley. Q.E.D. Aziraphale snorted at himself as he poured a generous helping of wine into the glass he’d miracled out of his empty teacup.

But he _was_ attracted to the demon, he was almost certain of that. He’d been fond of him for years, far earlier than the arrangement, maybe as early as that first time he’d come back from Heaven in a new body. Maybe earlier than _that_. Maybe he’d liked Crowley since the garden. It certainly threw his anger at him when he’d tried to kill him in pharaoh’s palace into a different light. He did think the attraction had only come about since the last of Crowley’s bodies but he couldn’t be sure.

A small, sensible part of his mind said very calmly and patiently that Aziraphale had read enough human fiction to know what should happen next- he should go and tell Crowley how he felt. There were, after all, only two possible outcomes: either Crowley would feel the same or he wouldn’t. A much larger and more irrational part of his mind was yelling at him to just get completely piss drunk and leave it to worry about another day. The yelling voice sounded suspiciously familiar, truth be told. It _hissed_.   

Aziraphale shook his head. He was good at listening to the sensible part of his mind. He’d had to be to do this job for all these years, after all.

Well, Aziraphale thought grimly, standing up, if he was going to do this he better do it properly. He finished his glass of wine and bustled upstairs to look for something.

 

Crowley had just stepped out of the shower when he heard somebody knock on his door. He could have miracled away the grime from driving the burning Bentley back from Tadfield but he’d wanted to stand under the hot water for an hour or so. He hadn’t really anticipated having to entertain guests.

Nonetheless he pulled on a robe and brushed his hair back out of his eyes. He glanced at the dark circles under them in the mirror and sighed for good measure. Hopefully whoever it was would take one look at his disheveled and exhausted state and leave, come back to pester him another day. Never mind that Crowley didn’t know a single person, Heavenly, Infernal, or otherwise, who cared for such conventions of politeness.

He flung open the front door of his apartment and snorted. Aziraphale. He should have guessed.

“Angel. What do you want?” He asked, stepping back to let him into the apartment. Aziraphale hovered (metaphorically speaking) on the threshold, holding a bottle of wine, a book, and looking mightily awkward.

“Is this a bad time? I could come back.”

“No, no,” Crowley said in a huff, despite the fact that he had been hoping for this exact outcome not thirty seconds ago, “come in.” He took the bottle of wine Aziraphale held out to him and moved into the kitchen for some glasses.

 

An hour later they were both seated on Crowley’s very expensive and uncomfortable couch, which had been miracled, somewhere around the third bottle, into an old and squishy tweed pattern that resembled a piece of furniture in the flat about Aziraphale’s shop. They were sitting rather close together, Aziraphale’s breath occasionally ghosting across Crowley’s cheek as they reminisced.

“Do you remember the first time you got discorporated?” Aziraphale asked drunkenly after a long lull in their conversation.

Crowley nodded, his head bumping against Aziraphale’s shoulder with the motion. “The flood.”

“Mesopotamia.”

“Noah and the covenant.”

Aziraphale looked at him. “Why didn’t you get on board?” Crowley felt a different question in his gaze, but he wasn’t nearly drunk enough yet to entertain it.

“M’m a bloody demon, that’s why.”

Aziraphale looked away and took another sip of his drink. “I didn’t know you’d come back.”

“Yeah, I think we established that when you stabbed me in Egypt.”

“Did I ever apologize for that?”

Crowley sat up a little and nudged Aziraphale to do the same so he wouldn’t slide off Crowley’s shoulder. “Since when do you ever apologize for anything?”

Aziraphale made a tutting sound. “Now _really_. I apologize plenty.”

“No, you really don’t.” Crowley said with a good-natured snort, reaching to the coffee table to pour himself another glass of wine. “But you did apologize for that one, yes. In Alexandria.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale shifted on the couch, settling against Crowley again as he sat back with his filled glass. Crowley let out a small sigh of contentment as the angel leaned against him, thinking about the past.

Why was it he could remember some things like they were yesterday, and others hardly at all? He could remember the precise way it felt to walk through a harbor market in ancient Greece, the smell of the sea, the sounds of the boats and the men working them, the way the light glinted off the water and off Aziraphale’s hair when he emerged from the crowd behind him. He could remember a day black as night and slitting Aziraphale’s throat to give himself time to run before the real catastrophe struck, hearing him fall to the floor behind him as he all but threw himself down the steps. He could remember the library burning around them, snapping at Aziraphale to come along, there wasn’t any chance of saving the building, only to have Aziraphale snap right back that they couldn’t leave Hypatia there to die before running into the flames. He’d been missing for years afterwards and when Crowley found him again he’d been taller and had long curly hair.

Alexandria. The smell of old papyrus and new oak shipped across the sea, and then later of burning. Crowley had felt an odd sense of closure, of circling back around at last to the beginning of something, running into Aziraphale’s burning bookshop. He’d left the angel in Alexandria and it had felt right, somehow, to charge into the shop in an attempt not to leave him again.

“You forgive me?” Aziraphale prodded Crowley’s arm, startling him from his thoughts.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Crowley said unconcernedly. Aziraphale stiffened next to him and Crowley glanced over to see him staring at him with narrowed eyes. Crowley cleared his throat. “Yes, I forgive you. It was a long time ago. We were different people.” Aziraphale looked mollified and settled back into his comfortable position.

“I wanted to protect you, you know.” He said after a while.

“You tried to _kill_ me.”

“That's not what I meant, idiot. Later. During the persecutions.”

“Oh.” And that was really all Crowley had to say about that. He was rather fuzzy on that whole period of time, apart from constantly feeling like he was tired of running. The Arrangement had sprung up in the aftermath of all of that and that was the important bit to the demon.

“I think…” Aziraphale said slowly, taking Crowley’s wine glass from his fingers and finishing it off himself before setting the glass down on the table, “I think it was inevitable that we’d fall in love, going through all that together.”

Crowley nearly choked on his tongue. Never mind that he’d been wondering for centuries if the angel thought of him _that way_. It was just so unlike him to say something so casually. “What are you talking about?”

Aziraphale had sat up again, and was looking at Crowley with an expression infinitely more tender than Crowley had ever seen on his face before.

 “Asssiraphale.” Crowley said in a whisper, drawing out the angel’s name in a hiss that was half an attempt at comfort, half exasperation. He felt himself trembling very slightly and mentally told himself to get a grip.

Before he could start really kicking himself, however, Aziraphale had turned away and sighed, taking off his glasses to wipe at his eyes with his sleeve, and Crowley felt alarm replace his self-pity. “Oh, for fuck's sake, Crowley… well, we’re all each other has, aren’t we. I thought…" he sniffed slightly. "This is not going the way I thought it would."

“Tell me about it.” Crowley said, still thinking about the past and the strange winding path from the garden to this moment. He narrowed his eyes and ignored the squirming sensation in his stomach and the way all the blood seemed to have rushed out of him and left him chilled and anxious. “I can’t believe I’m about to be the one asking this, it might be unprecedented for _you_ to be the one who’s a mess, but what in G-someone's name is wrong?”

“The Ineffable Plan! Something was supposed to happen!”

“And you’re what, angry that it didn’t? I thought you liked Earth. Think about sushi, angel. Here,” he said, struck with inspiration and grabbing the book Aziraphale had brought off the coffee table, “think about books!” He flipped it open and frowned. “Why did you bring over a book of sonnets?”

“How can you be this bloody dense.” Aziraphale snapped. “ _Nothing happened_ , and that means _everything_ that’s happened for the last six thousand years was for nothing.”

Crowley pursed his lips. “No, it doesn’t.”

“What did we do all of it for, then?” Aziraphale said, his voice heavy with sorrow. Crowley sighed.

“Listen, angel,” he started, “As far as I’m concerned, we did it for us. The averted apocalypse was for _us_.”

Aziraphale stared at him. “What are you saying, that we had a choice?"

Crowley shrugged. “Maybe we did. Maybe we always have.”

Aziraphale kissed him. Aziraphale kissed him, and in his mind’s eye he saw a hundred different Aziraphales from a hundred different places, in St James’s Park, in St Peter's Square, in Alexandria and Greece and the steps of a palace. In a tavern on the banks of the Euphrates. In the garden.

“I chose to love you a long time ago.” Aziraphale sighed against his cheek, “but I wasn’t sure until now.”

Crowley melted under his touch as the angel kissed his way across Crowley’s jaw and onto his neck.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked several hours later, as the two of them were tucked up in Crowley’s large and comfortable bed, Aziraphale’s arm around Crowley and Crowley’s head on the angel’s chest.

“My dear?” Aziraphale murmured back sleepily.

“Why did you bring the sonnets?”

Aziraphale let out a little huff of breath that might have been a laugh. “I’ve been meaning to tell you for years how much I love your eyes.”

**Author's Note:**

> My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;  
> Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;  
> If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;  
> If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.  
> I have seen roses damasked, red and white,  
> But no such roses see I in her cheeks;  
> And in some perfumes is there more delight  
> Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.  
> I love to hear her speak, yet well I know  
> That music hath a far more pleasing sound;  
> I grant I never saw a goddess go;  
> My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.  
> And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare  
> As any she belied with false compare.  
> \--Sonnet 130, William Shakespeare


End file.
